Letters to the Editor
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From the webpage
This self-contained compound will include the embassy itself, residences for the ambassador and staff, PX, commissary, cinema, retail and shopping, restaurants, schools, fire station and supporting facilities such as power generation, water purification system, telecommunications, and waste water treatment facilities. In total, the 104 acre compound will include over twenty buildings including one classified secure structure and housing for over 380 families.
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Think about it...what else could the Embassy be?
This self-contained compound will include the embassy itself, residences for the ambassador and staff, PX, commissary, cinema, retail and shopping, restaurants, schools, fire station and supporting facilities such as power generation, water purification system, telecommunications, and waste water treatment facilities. In total, the 104 acre compound will include over twenty buildings including one classified secure structure and housing for over 380 families.
Whatever disastrous policy decisions led us to invade Iraq in the first place, is there any alternative to building this kind of self-contained high-security Embassy? Unless you're looking for regular news like "Diplomats killed in Baghdad supermarket parking lot," "Diplomats killed on Baghdad basketball court," "Diplomats sickened by poisoned city water," "Diplomatic buildings destroyed in Baghdad rocket attack when Iraqi firemen refuse to respond," "Tiny Baghdad Embassy overrun by mob," etc. Or the follow-up news like "Most Baghdad Embassy positions go unfilled," "Diplomats cite deaths of colleagues in refusing Baghdad assignments," etc.
As the former Secretary of State wisely advised the current President before this invasion, we broke Iraq, so we bought it. We're stuck with the problems we've created, which are very real. Yes, the security situation is our own fault, but it is what it is, and building some tiny, vulnerable Embassy would lead only to the deaths of more Americans in Iraq. What else could the Embassy be but high-security and self-contained?
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The new Iranian embassy
I'm sure the Iranians will enjoy the fancy facilities once we get tired of the daily American body count and withdraw from this miserable, ill-conceived fiasco.
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We are the bullies of the world.
We did not invade Iraq to free its people. We invaded Iraq to steal its oil and control its land. If a few hundred thousand Iraqis need to die or suffer so that the American Empire can have more, well, they're a bunch of raghead darkie wogs anyway, so who cares?
Congratulations, my fellow Americans. We are the new Evil Empire.
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A difference
Saddam Hussain built his monuments on his ancestral lands; but Americans are trying to establish monuments for themselves on lands that they looted from Iraqis in broad daylight!
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Renderings unto Caesar?
A mere embassy here, designed by EBY? Looks more like renderings unto Caesar. And what,no momnument to supplement Hussein's Hands-of-Victory? I suggest a replacement. Call it "Feet of Clay" modeled after any of the master planners of this ill-conceived war - big toe suggestively pointed to the heavens to satisfy some of the fundamentalists steering policy in this tragic and ongoing fiasco in Iraq.
This embassy is a structural nightmare implicating, unleashing; advocating so much more so garishly embedded in this gross monstosity. Think of "Feet of Clay" as a giant footprint resting among the artist's assimilated palm trees; trees which look more like regimented feather dusters resting on the green.
The design motif needs more aesthetic components, for sculptural appointments tend to soften and make landscape instinctively receptive to its intended goals, whatever they may be. Drawing board concepts appear sterile considering the vast itinerary of time and effort; bodies and bucks sacrificed here. Glass and steel boxes and endless pathways...but why no art to soften the view?
Where is the two-headed gargoyle that begs for recognition above the central entrance; a duo-facial likeness of Cheney/Bush? Such an arrogant alliance demands an appropriate signature statement positing the power and glory of it all.
Add smaller gargoyles too; faces of this administration's secondary facilitators. Imagine the corresponding charm of a red, white and blue tiled fountain with head of Libby spitting water from above a chunky Rove, one natural cherub with a face like a thumb, deviously rising his terra-cotta self above the water lilies from the base of same fountain.
Envision too, a little furthur on in the gardens...a Wolfowitz look-alike playing a harp with a beatific smile on his tinted concrete likeness.
For all of those who still endorse this madness, give them lesser prominance among the numerous and varied structures.
Picture all this in a nation reduced to rubble by those who intend to inhabit this royal compound in all its splendor? Saviors, occupiers...what does all this represent?
At least be democratic about it and stage a grand Open House. Let the people see our intentions. Certainly they will be impressed. Bigger than life, " bigger ever", defines no mere embassy. It is a castle compound bunkered and surrounded by a self-contained, permanent city fit only for kings and golden asses.
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Triple Isolated
Assuming the benign view that the Embassy is as it is, simply for security reasons, still leaves the problem of isolation.
The authors of the Ugly American wrote a paperback called "A Nation of Sheep" which talked about why Americans didn't understand foreign countries. The ignorance extended to Embassy staff because they lived apart from the natives. Natives dependent on the Embassy would tell diplomats what they wanted to hear - a job was on the line after all.
Baghdad is becoming isolated from the rest of Iraq ('moat', checkpoints). The Green Zone is isolated from Baghdad. Has been for years now. The Embassy will be isolated even from the Green Zone.
It is a bubble within a bubble within a bubble. Secure from attack but perhaps not as secure as it is from understanding. Might as well build the embassy in Kansas.
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Well at least it has some function
As opposed to the solid travertine palaces that dotted Iraq when Saddam was there. I'm always amazed in the third world the obscene waste that tyrants create when they erect monuments to themselves. In Cote d'Ivoire a past President once created an entire marble city in the jungle his native village of Yamoussoukrou. Of course only was it completely useless, it was off limits to most citizens. That didn't stop him from bulding a modern 10 lane highway to it from Abidjan on the coast. Today Yamoussoukrou is the 'capital' but parts of it are threatened with being overrun with vines and wild animals. It's claim to fame is that it has a Basilica larger than St. Peter's in Rome. In the middle of the jungle, more than 100 miles and 4 hrs from the coast.